While some things don’t really need a public service announcement, we felt our Public=Online campaign could benefit from one.

The majority of grassroots campaigns are about product more than process. Whether they’re for electing a specific candidate, instituting universal health care or creating a flat tax they have a well defined goal they’re working toward.

When your goal is to alter processes and to ensure the accountability of all elected officials, describing your campaign becomes a bit more difficult. Especially when your campaign is being co-created with activists from across the country on a daily basis.

I made this public service announcement to quickly show how real-time data helps you make informed decisions and why the Public=Online campaign is so important.

It’s my understanding that the US Government is the largest publisher/content producer in the world. As such, you’d think they would invest in a major overhaul of their production process to distribute these data and analysis real-time. First, it would show how much work the federal/state agencies perform on behalf of the tax payers and citizens (kids are people too!) Second, a lot of government information serves as free market research for the private sector, especially contractors. Third, when the US acts, so does the rest of the world and such data transparency reforms would spread globally. Pragmatically, digitizing all government information in real-time would have economic benefits for both the USG and business with an international spillover affect.

The Sunlight Foundation is a national, nonpartisan nonprofit organization that advocates for open government.

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